Photo Credit: Patagonia

Aussie native Belinda Baggs is a surfer known for her elegant, technical longboard style. Formerly third in the world at the Women’s World Longboard Championship, the Patagonia ambassador and mother-of-one retired from competing after finding it at odds with her enjoyment and connection with the water.

Here, Belinda provides an insight into a typical day in her life in Victoria, Australia.

Photo Credit: ROGUE FITNESS

If you know CrossFit, you know Sam Briggs. Affectionately known as ‘the Engine’ due to her unstoppable endurance, Sam made the switch from triathlon and duathlon to CrossFit at the end of 2010 and within three years won the 2013 CrossFit Games. Oh, and the former firefighter is also an indoor rowing world record holder.

A few weeks ago I caught up with Sam at her box, TRAIN Manchester, where she and fellow CrossFit athlete and Fire & Ice teammate, Sara Sigmundsdottir, were warming up for their Team Series workouts.

I came across Jacqui Furneux when her daughter sent me a press release about her book, Hit the Road, Jac! Seven years, Twenty Countries, No plan, which recounts tales of her seven-year adventure exploring the world on a motorbike, much of it solo. During her travels, which took her everywhere from Nepal to East Timor, Jacqui slept up trees, in police stations, brothels, toilets and at the side of the road. I loved the idea of Jacqui, at the time in her 50s, eschewing the norm and being so intrepid, so we had a chat and she regaled me with an account of some of her escapades. My jaw dropped (yours will too).

Photo Credit: Steve Loughlin

When she’s not cycling professionally for Hagens Berman Supermint, athlete-chef Jess Cerra spends her time building her JoJé bar brand of ‘real food’ sports energy bars and moonlighting as a Fit Chef. Once a year, Jess works as a personal chef to bike brand Cervélo at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, catering for both the Cervélo brand team and Cervélo’s pro athletes. Here, she gives us an insight into what this entails.

Photo Credit: www.thatcameraman.com

After knee surgery stalled her successful GB 1500m track career, Emma Pallant made the switch to multisport endurance events and hasn’t looked back. A duathlon World Champion in 2015 and 2016, Emma added aquathlon World Champion to her title list this year and topped a season of triathlon podiums by taking silver at this year’s 70.3 Triathlon World Championship.

Here, the 28-year-old Team Dillon athlete and coach talks about bike spills, getting dropped by ‘picnic goers’ and setting 2018 Ironman goals.

53-year-old surgeon and mountaineer, Ghazala Ahmad-Mear, is no stranger to adventure, climbing and expeditions – in fact, she met her husband (renowned Polar explorer, Roger Mear) at the summit of the Matterhorn in Switzerland! In January, Ghazala will be the only woman undertaking the South Pole Energy Challenge – the first polar expedition using only renewable energy.

Here, Ghazala explains more about the expedition, her love of climbing, and training for the 30kg sled pull.

Photo Credit: Neil Shearer Photography

28-year old British athlete, Kimberley Murray, was a long-jump Olympic prospect until a hip injury prompted her to take the leap into the adrenalin-fuelled world of bob Skeleton. With a new Olympic dream in the pipeline, she’s now gunning for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Ahead of jetting to Vancouver (where she is now), Kim gave me an insider look at pre-season life as a skeleton athlete in Lillehammer, including what she gets up to when she isn’t hurtling down the ice at more than 120 kilometres an hour…

Adventurer and explorer Ness Knight has a knack of making remarkable feats of endurance look easy. So far, she’s completed a host of extreme endurance expeditions around the world, from cycling 2000 miles solo and self-supported across the USA and fatbiking 1000km solo across the Namib Desert to making history as the first woman to stand-up paddleboard 1000 miles, and the first female to swim the length of the River Thames. Her next big challenge? To become the first woman to row the Pacific Ocean solo and non-stop – a feat which will require Ness to row a mind-blowing 14-18 hours a day for 5-6 months.

Ness has spent the last six weeks in the Outer Hebrides exploring wild Scotland, but the 32-year-old Merrell ambassador kindly took a break from hiking, trail running and wild swimming to answer my questions.

Photo Credit: @13thdisciple

If you’ve ever watched one of those crazy video clips of people doing incredible moves on a bar, it’s highly likely you’ve seen Simone Ming in action. A calisthenics and street workout specialist, Simone’s bar and bodyweight tricks have earned her numerous competition titles, including Queen of the Bar 2016 and Urban Fitness League 2017 World Champion. Here, the talented personal trainer and former gymnast takes a break from training to answer my twenty quick-fire questions.

When running shoe experts, Saucony, invited me to test their new Koa off-road running shoe range and learn more about running trails and fells in the Lake District, I jumped at the chance. Here’s what I learned (and rediscovered) as I got reacquainted with off-road running in the Lakes…